IACC External Meetings Demand Report 2022

the requirement to meet with more people – more safely and effectively — virtual and hybrid meetings are here to stay (Hopin, 2020). When hosting a meeting or conference where the attendees are both present in-person and virtually, meeting quality is of uttermost importance. Engagement levels must be high from both parties, and to ensure that happens, the right technology needs to be considered in all environments. Having a solid video conferencing platform offers a streamlined hybrid conference experience that makes workplace collaboration simple, engaging, and inclusive — regardless of where guests are calling from. The main speaker in a hybrid meeting room will switch from in-room to on-video participants without warning. So, for a hybrid meeting to be a success for all attendees, you will need microphones and cameras that can pick up both audio and video (Bamford, 2021). 2.2 Literature Research Literature research is a detailed description of the topics that are discussed in the environmental research. These key topics are relevant to come to a better understanding of the issues that are at stake. The key topics are organisational change and culture, post-pandemic transformation, and the constant change in customer expectations. 2.2.1 Organisational change Organisational change is defined as a deliberately planned change in an organisation ’s formal structure, systems, processes, or product-market domain intended to improve the attainment of one or more organisational objectives (Yorks & Torraco, 2005). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment that is dynamically uncertain and a need for rapid change in many unforeseen areas with many organisations. When the pandemic caused the economy to crash, companies raced to stay solvent by reducing their costs to match their declining revenues. Most focused on slashing their personnel costs through downsizing or salary reductions, or both. Even before the pandemic, organisations had already started to shrink footprints and the recession is likely to accelerate that trend. However, this could be an opportunity, as well as investing in technology since COVID-19 has speeded up the needed adaptation of digital technology (Jain et al., 2020). In line with recommendations to reduce large gatherings and increase social distancing, multiple companies have asked the majority of office-based employees to work remotely. CEOs, CFOs, and key decision-makers saw the advantages of downsizing offices and collaborating remotely during 2020. The most well-known large companies such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc. transitioned to part-time and permanent working from home arrangements (We Work Remotely, 2021) . Many companies would like to merge working in the office and working from home permanently or allow employees to work from home indefinitely and make it a standard practice. 2.2.2 Organisational culture The organisational culture has been reinvented in these past years, for several reasons. Millennials have become a large part of the working force. However, three other generations contribute to the working effort. These are the Baby boomers, Generation X, and the first of Generation Z. For companies, this means that they could have employees in their late teens to their early 70’s. This creates an opportunity for everybody to learn more and under different perspectives by establishing mentoring programs. Nevertheless, this can be a challenging situation for managers to handle. Furthermore, boomers are still at the origin of many company policies and work styles. With different values and expectations of each other, it becomes much more difficult to please every generation (Weikle, 2019).

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